1Juan Manuel Fangio
Five times F-1 Champion Juan Manuel Fangio was kidnapped by Cuban rebels just before the Cuban Grand Prix. He shortly after lied to the kidnappers about his teammate Stirling Moss being on his honeymoon, as they wanted him too. Moss would go on to win the race. Juan was later returned unharmed, and he described it as “one more adventure.”
2. In 1960, an Australian man named Bazil Thorne won nearly $3 million in the lottery and his picture was plastered all over the news. Shortly after, his 8-year-old son Graeme Thorne was kidnapped for ransom and eventually murdered. This changed anonymity laws for lottery winners in Australia forever.
3. Well-known English writer Agatha Christie disappeared mysteriously for 11 days in 1926. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even tried to find her by having a psychic read her glove. She was eventually found safe, but the mystery behind her disappearance was only solved 80 years later. In 2006 it was discovered that she was under the grip of a rare but increasingly acknowledged mental condition known as a ‘fugue state’, or a period of out-of-body amnesia induced by stress.
4. During the Watergate scandal, the then-wife of Nixon’s Attorney General, Martha Mitchell, was kidnapped, beaten, and forcibly sedated by her husband’s security detail to keep her from speaking to reporters.
5. “Fetal abduction” is a rare crime of child abduction by kidnapping of a pregnant mother and extraction of her fetus through a crude C-section. In a small number of cases, a few pregnant victims and about half of their fetuses have survived the assault.
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6Boris Weisfeiler
Boris Weisfeiler was a Soviet-born American mathematician who was kidnapped in 1985, allegedly for his Jewish faith, by the Colonia Dignidad, a Nazi commune in Chile. His fate remains unknown, as several witnesses have claimed to have seen him in the Colonia even decades later.
7. A pastor and his wife (Joe and Evangeline Combs) kidnapped a 4-month-old baby to raise as a slave. They forced her to serve them and consistently beat, tortured, and molested her. The victim Elsa Garcia (name changed) was rescued at the age of 19 years old and had 410 scars on her body.
8. In 1973, when 16-year-old John Paul Getty III was kidnapped, his billionaire oil tycoon grandfather agreed to pay no more than $2.2 million, the maximum amount that was tax-deductible, and lent the remainder to his son, who was responsible for repaying the sum at four percent interest.
9. A 12-year-old Rosalynn McGinnis was kidnapped by her stepfather and smuggled into Mexico, where she had 9 children fathered by her kidnapper. At the age of 32, 20 years after her kidnapping, her neighbors helped her and 8 of her children escape their captor and return to the U.S.
10. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was an ardent atheist, who got prayer kicked out of American schools. She was kidnapped along with her son and granddaughter and dismembered, not by a religious fanatic, but by a fellow atheist. He also robbed $600,000 from the victims.
11Nazis Kidnappings
Nazis kidnapped “Aryan-looking” children from across Europe and brought them back to Germany for indoctrination.
12. Two men Terrance Williams and Felipe Santos went missing in 2004 and 2003, respectively, under similar circumstances in Naples, Florida. Both men were last seen being arrested by police officer Steve Calkins, who claims he changed his mind about both arrests and let them go.
13. Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt loved swimming and diving, so much that when his press secretary expressed concern about this he said, “Look, what are the odds that a PM would drown or be eaten by a shark?” In 1967, Holt went for a swim in the ocean and was never seen again.
14. In 1950, conjoined twins Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova were kidnapped shortly after their birth by Soviet doctors and tortured for years with medical experiments. One twin developed psychopathic traits while the other despite all remained an empath.
15. A woman named Lucy Ann Johnson disappeared from her house in British Columbia in September 1961. Her husband reported her missing in 1965 and he was suspected of her murder. In 2013, she was found alive. She said that she had left because her husband had been abusive.
16Etan Patz
Etan Patz was the first missing kid to ever appear on a milk carton after his disappearance in New York in 1979. 40 years later, his killer was finally caught.
17. Theodosia Burr Alston, daughter of U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr, disappeared mysteriously at sea in 1812. At the age of 29, she sailed from Georgetown, South Carolina, aboard the Patriot. The ship and everyone on board were never seen again.
18. In 1888, Kentucky State Treasurer James “Honest Dick” Tate disappeared with $250,000 in state funds after years of embezzling the state’s treasury. He was never heard from or seen again. His theft is what spurred the state to impose strict terms limits on state officeholders.
19. In 1995, the Chinese government kidnapped a 6-year-old Tibetan boy called the Panchen Lama and replaced him with a Han Chinese “fake Panchen.” The Panchen Lama is in charge of choosing the next Dalai Lama, and the real Panchen Lama has never been heard from since.
20. Singer Walter Scott was known for his one-hit-wonder called “(Look Out for) The Cheater” which came out in the 60s. In 1983, during talks to reunite with his old music group “Bob Kuban and The In-Men”, he was kidnapped and murdered by his wife JoAnn and her lover James Williams. His body was found in 1987.
21Rachel Plummer
In 1836, Rachel Plummer then aged 17 was kidnapped and held prisoner by a Comanche tribe for 21 months. Her memoir is considered an invaluable glimpse into the culture and mindset of the Comanche tribe before disease and war forced them onto reservations.
22. An 11-year old girl named Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped in 1991 and she was only found when her kidnapper walked into a school in 2009 with two young girls claiming they were his daughters. They were in fact his daughters, their mother being Jaycee; who he had kept as a prisoner for 18 years. She gave birth to her daughters at just the age of 14.
23. Bride kidnapping or “ala kachuu” as a culture still occurs in several countries such as Ethiopia, Kyrgyzstan, and throughout Central Asia despite being illegal. One in five women are kidnapped to be married and the subsequent babies are on average smaller due to the mother’s psychological distress.
24. The USA might have adopted the metric system if pirates hadn’t kidnapped Joseph Dombey, the French scientist who was sent to help Thomas Jefferson persuade Congress to adopt the system.
25. On March 1, 1932, the 20-month old son of Charles Lindbergh (who flew the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927) was kidnapped. Even Al Capone offered his help from prison. In the aftermath of the crime (baby found dead), kidnapping was finally made a federal offense in the USA.
